Introduction

Maya Angelou's memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was her first published full-length literary work. The book takes its title from a poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar titled "Sympathy," in which he expresses his feelings of imprisonment due to racial prejudice. Similarly, Angelou's detailed memoir recounts her early years and the hardships she faced as a young black girl in America. However, the book also documents many of her childhood joys, learning experiences, and accomplishments, as well as hardships that transcend race.

In the book, the author—known to her family as Marguerite—chronicles a period of her young life filled with displacement and a complete absence of any sense of belonging. She and her brother Bailey are shuffled back and forth among family members after their parents divorce, living most of their early...